


Lunar sands, drier hands

by Ovmadns



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Gen, Genocide, Ishbal | Ishval, PTSD, War, but not forever and always, but only in the ending so idk how divergent that really is, everything is miserable, suicidal musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-27 23:23:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5068873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ovmadns/pseuds/Ovmadns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After lighting the country wide circle, Scar makes a choice to reach out one last time. Edward comes, and it both changes everything and nothing. Fic continuation of this <a href="http://allinthehands.tumblr.com/post/130450601156/au-where-scar-refuses-treatment-after-his-death">AU inktober</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Lunar sands, drier hands

**Author's Note:**

> In hindsight- it was probably a bad idea to write this fic in present tense while they're talking about the past. Apologies for the awkward grammar.

Scar wakes groggily to a blond of mop of hair, “hun… I’m still alive.”

Ed snorts, “Damn straight you are- after dropping a bomb like that on me you think I’d let you off easy?”

Scar groans, stretching atrophying muscles, “might have, wasn’t sure to be honest.”

The shorter blond huffs, getting up from his uncomfortable chair, “Whatever, you lucid enough?”

Scar flicks back a questioning look, and Ed barrels forward uncaring, “Cause Winry is here, and don’t even think of getting out of this one you hear me?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it”

* * *

Ed leaves and enters the hall where Al and Winry were just talking in hushed voices, both look up.

“He’s awake”

The mechanic gets up and takes a deep breath, “Ok.”

Ed feeling antsy and uncertain, grabs her wrist before she could get to the door, “are you sure about this, like really really sure? Cause I don’t know-”

She looks back in indignation, “Ed, we’ve been over this. Yes, stop fretting, I’m not going to break down, and you’re both going with me. It’s just Scar, I’ve handled him before, so let’s do it.”

Al nods in agreement, “She’s right Ed, and like, you’ve been jumpy about it since you came out screaming weeks ago for Armstrong and a medic, and that’s with both of us. Whatever it is, we’re gonna to be okay brother.”

Ed looks at one and the other before shouldering both of them into a desperate hug, something they are surprised by, but reciprocate.

“I know, I know,” and he opens the door.

* * *

Scar is sitting up, flipping through a newspaper, he glances up the entry. There’s a moment of assessing silence that the ishvalan breaks staring quizzically, “I didn’t know there’d be extra audience.”

Winry, bless her soul, bristles before Ed could out a word, “Scar, it’s Alphonse. Ed got his body back, and whatever you’ve got to say to me, you can say to the both of us.”

Scar looks momentarily surprised before his expression segues into something unreadable, turning to Alphonse who stiffens under the red eyed man’s attention.

“You’re much smaller than the suit of armor, but congratulations-“

Then he looks at Ed and back, “-to all of you.”

Al shifts awkwardly, “um thanks- if you don’t mind let’s just start.”

So Scar takes a deep breath and looks at Winry.

“Last time we met, you asked me why? I told you that any answer I gave you would have been an excuse. Do you still want to know?”

Winry doesn’t full out glare in aggression, but it’s coiled tight under a wreath of assertion. “Of course I do, you freaking told Ed before me, when I’m the one you actually orphaned. Honestly I’m still very miffed about that, but… what changed your mind? Because regardless of what you tell me now, it won’t make me suddenly forgive you so…”

Scar surprisingly laughs, lays his head back on the pillow, “good, that’s a real relief Miss Rockbell, more than you know.”

Winry rubs her nose in annoyance, “okay I’m not even going to dignify that, so fess up.”

Scar only watches the girl in a contemplative way. He thinks in the back of his mind, that she looks like her mother, but has her fathers’ eyes and his no nonsense attitude (what he’d briefly witnessed anyways). The older man closes his eyes heavily, before opening them and matching the mechanic’s vindictive blue.

“Your parents didn’t know I’d just watched my family blown to bits by Kimberly when they saved me.” Winry flinches visibly at that and Ed abruptly and ferociously wants to throttle Scar, and punch himself too, for even thinking this was a needed thing.

The tanned man doesn’t stop, “It might not have made a difference even if they did, because on waking, I needed to lash out my fury on something. My family, my brother, they were probably all dead by the time i was found in the rubble.” Ed definitely wants to strangle him.

“I can only imagine it now, how my brother preformed alchemy on the shoulder Kimberly blew up, amputating his own arm while his guts were falling out. He died to make sure I lived, and I woke up to your parents ordering me to stay down, with his arm attached to where mine was hours ago.” Ed also kind of wants to cry as well, at his brother’s expression, and god forbid at -

Scar, who’s laughing small and bitterly then, “and I just snapped, because how could I when they saved me, the worthless one and not Mikhael? Mikhael who constantly had his nose in a book and would sooner burn his food or home down if mother or I didn’t kick him out of the kitchen. Mikhael who was so scholarly it got him disowned, but he kept at it because he knew; he had learned things that could change the world. Instead, it was me joining the living in a wretched haze of violence. What I did after, I don’t think any of it really registered until the other patients started screaming.”

“They were crying, a lot, almost all of them, from children to elders and everyone in between.”

“That should have made me feel something, but it didn’t because we were at war, and everyday someone was screaming in hysteria or grief over their losses. What difference did it make that it was a pair of Amestrians this time instead of little Risa who played chess with her grandfather across the street? Two doctors instead of a temple full of people at mass, when cousin jihad was handing out flatbreads to the homeless, only for Mustang to burn everyone to the ground with a snap?” Ed stops paying attention to his own feelings, and concentrates on holding Winry’s hand.

“Everyone died in that war, every neighborhood was blown to pieces by human weapons like Kimberly, or systematically slaughtered for red rocks by Marcoh. I honestly didn’t think back to it until you showed up with a gun pointed at me.”

“Funny thing is, all I could think after was how close your parents were, still holding on to each other, and how much wailing was coming from that dusty little field hospital. I’d say sorry, but that’s a shitty answer. You deserve to shoot me Rockbell, empty out all the bullets in central over my head and more. But even that, I don’t think would be enough, or change anything for the better as you’ve told me. And yet, when I was fighting Bradley, and losing, I couldn’t muster a single reason to outlive activating Mikhael’s transmutation circle.”

“It wasn’t till I did, that I remembered there was one, and it was these.”

Here, Scar holds up his arms scrawled with a dead man’s dreams. Al wonder’s fleetingly, if Scar’s brother had performed human transmutation to attach the right one, if they’d both seen their gates and why that even mattered.

“My brother’s research worked, and he had more, most of it actually survived Kimberly’s bombing, buried in the wreckage that was his house. He thought, in all his self-depreciating stupidity that it wouldn’t, which was why he passed his journal to me, because he made sure that I would. It’s where I found the pattern for my left arm and what allowed me to win against Bradley.”

“I’ve long been fine with dying, but not if that research ends up in the wrong hands. Not if the Amestrian military gets my body and gets to copy these tattoos to etch on to some lap dog of theirs in the future. If I could kill half a dozen state alchemist and win against Bradley with only my amateur understanding of Mikael’s work, what the hell would other alchemists do with it?” Ed wishes that didn’t send chills down his spine, and Al watches the horror continue.

“I’d rather blow these arms to smithereens then hand any of it over to them, which was what I was thinking of when Armstrong’s men came to give me first aid.”

“But irrationally, as I was bleeding out, you came into mind,” and Winry’s shivering is interrupted by a twitch. “So I told them to call Elric instead or I’d collapse the floor, the whole foundation and bury everything with me. Because your parents saved me when they shouldn’t have and you patched me up when you didn’t want to. I figured I owed you quite a lot of something in return, though what I had no idea, beyond that question you asked me. And well… here we are.”

Winry sat to the end of it in a kind of wiped daze. Through Scar’s entire monologue, a torrent of conflicting and intense emotions fought within her. There were several times she wanted to beat the scarred man senseless and others when she wanted to curl up in a ball and sob for everyone and everything. Now that he is done, it's that and all her emotion trying to get out her mouth at once. So nothing comes out, not when Al is gently shaking her or Ed is clutching at her hand in a death grip.

“…Winry?”

Smashed out of her daze she stands up shakenly, and in an afterthought whips Scar across the face with a crack of a slap. He doesn’t so much as flinch in reaction and suddenly the ringing silence is too suffocating. “I need a minute,” then Winry bolts out of the room, Ed calling her name repeatedly in alarm as he chases after, echoing down the hall.

Leaving Al helplessly in the chair, and Scar looking listless out the window.

Al groans and holds his head, “This is what you were itching to tell us Scar? Because holy crap that was unnecessarily brutal.”

Scar just shrugs and sinks into the cushion. “It was the truth, it’s why I didn’t talk to you all or her in the first place. But if I’m to live instead of dying in obscurity, something has to give.”

Unsaid, Al muses, is that it was Scar himself that gave, collapsed inwards like the deepest levels of central he had intended to. The younger Elric feels exhausted, torn between understanding of weeks of Ed’s almost panicked clinginess, and Winry’s current distraught. There's also the sick realization that he and his brother weren’t worlds apart from the serial killer in the hospital bed. A fact that he wishes wasn’t so achingly clear, because Scar is not a person he’s ever wanted to sympathize with, let alone share a warped mirror history with.

Al thinks for a moment of the smoke and fire on his old house, his mother’s frail smile, and the sensation of returning into his own skin. He breathes through his nose.

“Kimberly is dead, we defeated him when I was fighting Pride. He lost to the teeth of his own chimera soldier, Heinkle. Pride ate him and added him to his philosopher stone later. At least that’s what Ed tells me when he fought and shattered Pride.”

Scar twists at that comment and for an impossibly long second, Al is left wondering why he even bothers, before the Ishvalan sags deeper into the bed, “that’s good to hear, best thing I’ve heard all day.”

To which the Elric had to throw a grime comment at, “I doubt you’ve done much hearing, since all you’ve done today is sit and yak at us about your horrible past.”

Scar in all his world weariness, shrugs again, “there’s not much I can do right now- being comatose for three weeks straight lends little to actual movement.”

Al scoffs at that, “you’re telling me, try spending nearly a decade beside truth’s door, butt naked and living off a thin blood tie Ed wasn’t even aware he was sending me. But I still get up in the mornings, because being back in my own body has been all I’ve wanted since the worst has happened. You need to get up too y’know? From…” Al pauses and waves haphazardly “all of this.”

Scar raises an eyebrow, “are you counseling me on how to live Alphonse? I just broke your friend’s heart all over again for no good reason, Why would you care?”

The sickly teenager frowns at that, “That’s exactly why you should realize how important it is to get yourself together.” Al’s eyes harden then, “But if you can’t figure it out, it’s not my place to say. Just don’t do this again Scar. I get why and what you needed to tell Winry, but the next time you so much as look at her the wrong way, or ‘accidentally’ hurt yourself, me and Ed will put you through hell, do you understand me Scar?”

The ishvalan man in all his infuriating laxness has the gall to smile, “I wouldn’t expect any less from you Elrics. You two have to be the most stubborn people I’ve met, right next to Miss Rockbell and Mikhael.”

While that smile might be edging on half a world’s worth of pain, Al clenches his heart and pushes through before Scar can slip away, “About that- your rant, half the reason we’re here, the rest of this research from your brother you talked of, what do you intend to do about it if you’re set on not letting it into military hands?”

Scar looks far away for a moment and blinks to more clarity, “I was going to give it to Mei Chang, if she has any further interest in it. But if she doesn’t want it- I’ll probably leave it buried or burn it if I can’t find some good use for it.”

Al bites the side of his lip, “how about giving it to me and Ed?” Because while Scar is only barely competent at the art, his point makes sense, even with Bradley six feet under and the homunculus gone. The tanned man just tilts his head, “trust my brother’s life research on alchemy, to a pair of teenagers that somehow lost their own bodies in their pursuit of it?

Alphonse’s anger suddenly flares at that, “we got our bodies back in case you haven’t noticed, and that’s-“ _Better then you._ But he swallows those thoughts, because angry words pinning Mikhael’s death on Scar’s own incompetence feels childish and cruel. Instead he finishes lamely, “it’s better than giving it directly to Mustang or another state alchemist. Ed’s traded his Alchemy to get me back, we’re now free of their leash. At the very least we’ve never hurt anybody else besides ourselves in our own stupidity.”

That, for all intents and purposes, Scar takes as a point, “fair enough.” He grimaces in an effort to sit upright more properly, “I’ll show you when I’m out of this hospital bed for good and when you lose the crutches.”

Al, for the first time since entering the room, smiles a real one, “you better, it’s going to be pathetic if I beat you on recovery old man.”

Scar returns the gesture, holding his brother’s arm’s out as a peace offering. “I’m not that old, you’ve got a couple years yet before you could hand my ass to me again.” To which Al laughs at, promising much sooner as they shake on it.

* * *

 

Later, Winry walks back in and proceeds to rip Scar new one. The Ishvalan is fittingly terrified of the sudden onslaught of slaps, punches, furious accusations, tears and most surprisingly, a hug. She makes him promise never to repeat his suicide stunt as Al had, as well as a million other deeds for ‘repayment’. Scar has enough mind to sit through it and keep it in earnest. Ed spends the entire episode alternating from relief, constipation, and exasperation, because of course, it’s his little brother of all people who somehow finds the whole thing funny. Who was he kidding, thinking Al would let his worrywarting and over protectiveness slide without teasing.

But Ed knows, it’s out of love. While Scar may always be a nameless son-of-a-bitch in his books, (not a fan of the pick your own label spiel) he can’t say he’s really unsatisfied in the times after. Armstrong and the Ishvalan kept their promises, and he gets to hear Winry laughing, tears and all, at traded stories from survivors of the war and previous patients. He learns more on Urie and Sara’s antics then he’s ever wanted, and celebrates their bright lives together with Winry. The blond mechanic remembers them now for all the good they did for the world, and works tirelessly in making new memories. He has his brother’s back, and every day they try a food or dish on his list and then some, because there’s a whole world still out there for them to explore. By the year end, Al's grinning ear to ear when all three are digging around in new Ishvala, uncovering old secrets from the rubble with hopes to brighter new ones.

**Author's Note:**

> I really like fma, i'm just not 100% ok with the "ignorance is bliss" and "don't dwell, just bury your negative feelings" approach cow-sensei takes. So this happened. Thanks for reading to the end, despite the overabundance of emotional pain in this fic. Scar's relationship with any of the golden trio is kind of a mother load of skeletons trying to crawl out.


End file.
